Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Wednesday Wedding Weigh-In

Years ago, when I was just a wee little thing, I was literally that--a wee little thing.  Up until my freshman year in college, concerned friends and teachers would query me closely about whether I was eating enough, if I wanted a little bit of their delicious cafeteria sloppy joe, did my parents remember to feed me when I got home from school, and so on in a similar vein.  In all actuality, I wasn't even underweight, I was just a thin girl with a penchant for king sized packages of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  However, over time, I began to carry that concern of others, their fear that I may be anorexic combined with their admiration of how tiny I was, as a sort of badge.  That's what I was really good at--being thin without even trying.  I would go to movies with friends and eat entire bags of Hershey's kisses.  After the movie we would walk across the street to McDonald's and I would eat a double stack with cheese a super sized french fry, a coke and a large milkshake and then scavenge the food that my friends couldn't finish.  People were amazed--I could eat a horse and never gain a pound.  Why I would want to eat a horse is beyond me, but the point was that if I wanted to, I could and I'd still weigh right around 100 pounds.  In retrospect, that turned out to be a fairly unhealthy attitude to have toward food.

Then, suddenly, one day, without any warning whatsoever, my metabolism came to a grinding halt.  I was still eating the same way I'd grown accustomed to, my main food groups being cheetos, chocolate, EZ Cheez, and Dr. Pepper, but my body was no longer burning all the calories without even breaking a sweat.  Throughout college I modified my diet to include slightly smaller portions of the above mentioned food groups, but my Air Force PT in the morning and the miles of campus I would cover by foot each day walking (and sometimes running when I needed just a feeeeew more minutes of sleep) helped keep the worst of the weight gain at bay.

Before I knew it, I was thrust into the "real world"--a world that involved a lot more driving than walking, and believe it or not, a much less demanding work out routine in the Air Force than in ROTC.  However, I continued eating and drinking with reckless abandon.  Until... oh, this story makes my face burn with shame to this day... until The Day I Got The Mail, a day that has been etched into my memory for all eternity.  I was in the car with Colby, on my way home from a grim shopping trip where I'd realized that suddenly the size 4 jeans at the GAP were no longer getting anywhere past my knees and the smallest size I could squeeze myself into was the "curvy" 8.  As we pulled into my apartment complex I pulled over to get the mail.  I parked the car and went about my business and then, as I was climbing back into the car, there was a horrific RIIIIIIIIIIIIIP and a sudden breeze around the rear portion of my body.  I looked at Colby, completely mortified, to see if he'd noticed, and he started laughing--not unkindly, but in a way that you really can't help but laugh when the person sitting next to you has just split their seam entirely down their bum.  That was the wake up call I needed that the ever increasing clothing sizes and the reflection in the mirror just couldn't give me.  I'd never bothered much about weighing myself as it had never mattered in the past, but the next day I got myself to the fitness center, and with great trepidation I stepped on the scale.

147.

That was the number that looked back at me.  I had absolutely no idea how I had let this happen.  I had managed to carry my weight fairly well, none of my friends could believe that that was "my number", and due to the baggy pajama cut of my BDUs I had only gone up one size in pants and figured that was just due to normal weight fluctuations.  But somehow I had managed to put on over 25 pounds since graduating from college.  And that's when I started paying attention.  I looked around and realized, I'm not the smallest girl in my social circle, or even among the thinner girls.  It occurred to me that I couldn't even remember the last time someone had mentioned how small I was.  When I went home for a visit I felt like I dwarfed my mom and my sister.  I looked up my BMI and was appalled to see that I was on the outside edge of having an unhealthy amount of body fat.

Since then, I've managed to lose a fair amount of weight through semi-regular running and watching what I eat to a certain degree.  I lost the most amount of weight on the South Beach Diet and incorporating 30 minutes of running into my schedule every day.  I got down to about 125 pounds, very close to my goal weight, but I hit a wall and eventually got tired of trying.  I settled for 125--close enough.

That was about a year ago and in the past few months I've noticed some of the weight coming back--a little bit of a roll here and bit more to pinch there.  And so I've decided to jump back on the weight loss train and see what I can do to finally meet my goal.  The idea to blog my endeavors came from two different places.  First, I really admired Frema for putting herself out there and being open and honest about her own desires to lose some weight of her own as well as form a support group in the blogosphere.  Of course, now she's all pregnant and focusing more on the miracle of life than fitting into her college jeans, so well played, Frema, well played!  The second reason is that I need to be able to hold myself accountable to someone other than myself.  I'm fairly confident that if I have to check in weekly with my progress, I'll be more likely to keep up with my efforts.

Today I went out and bought the very first scale I've ever owned--I made sure it was pretty since I'll have to be looking at it fairly often.  I'm not sure when the best time to weigh yourself is, but I just hopped on to get my first measurement and I'm coming in at 130.2.  My goal is to reach 115 pounds by the week of the wedding--November 24 for those of you who don't obsessively retain every detail of my life.  That gives me 25 weeks to lose 15 pounds, and a weekly goal of .5 pounds lost per week.

I've spent the past month enjoying my last few weeks of unabashed brownie and ice cream eating, and starting tomorrow I'm implementing Wedding Weightloss Version 1.0!  I'll reassess in a month and decide if there's anything that I should change about my program, but for now I'm planning a hybrid of the eating habits I learned from South Beach, incorporating plenty of whole grains and fruits and vegetables, and the Linda Evangelista approach, more specifically: "I don't diet. I just don't eat as much as I'd like to."  (I once attempted not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day, but in the end that didn't work out so well.  I spent a lot of time in bed.)  For now, the fitness program will be 30 minutes of running, 60 situps, and 20 pushups 4 times a week, I'll up the ante from time to time just to keep things interesting around here.

So, to recap:

Starting weight: 130.2
Goal weight: 115
Time left to reach goal: 25 weeks

Wish me luck, and feel free to play along if you'd like, and the Wednesday Wedding Weigh-In will return... next Wednesday!

The Goodbye Girl

This morning I waved Colby off for the third time this month.  It never gets any easier, you know?

On the up side, it's all of these trips that give us the ability to buy new furniture and plan fun trips, even without a solid income on my part (I'm still using my unemployment check each week to pay off the balance I racked up on my credit card during the months that I had no income at all... ugh...), but as I've told him many times, I would happily trade our bedside tables to have him home again.

Sometimes it feels as though things haven't changed all that much since the days of our long distance relationship, and it gets a bit daunting to think about how I'll be able to adapt to this practice of saying goodbye over and over again for at least the next 8 years.  But then I look around at the home we're making together, and I think about how very proud I am of him for doing what he does every day, and I remember how very worth it this all is.  The tax free paychecks don't hurt either.

And it helps when a bouquet of beautiful irises arrive on the doorstep.

It was great to have him home for a day, and we made tons of progress organizing the garage yesterday.  I should have taken some before pictures to fully illustrate how terrifying it was out there.  We're using the garage to store all of the furniture and boxes upon boxes of items we plan on donating to Airman's Attic, the base thrift store.  It's absolutely amazing how many things it's possible to accumulate in a lifetime, and as a recovering packrat, I've managed to say goodbye to quite a few things that I just don't use anymore, or have completely forgotten I even owned.  I'm still working on curing Colby of his packrat ways, but I'm confident that he'll get there eventually. 

We're also having trouble figuring out exactly what it is we need to do to have our garbage picked up each week.  It seems that the garbagemen flip a coin each Tuesday to determine whether or not they'll dispose of our garbage that day.  It's always a gamble that we'll have an empty trash can at the end of the week, and for the past couple of weeks, we've lost that bet.  So, now we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 very large bags of garbage as well as a full trashcan that we'll probably have to bring to the dump along with my old ratty couch!  There's also piles of broken down cardboard from our moving boxes as well as all of the standard "garage stuff", but we've at least mananged to organize it all into piles that we'll hopefully be able to tackle when Colby returns and maybe someday we'll even be able to get one of the cars in there!  I'm really aiming for the stars there.

And finally, I've undertaken the difficult task of trying to find the perfect yellow for our living room/kitchen area.  The best descriptive term I can think of for what I'm looking for is "Tuscan Yellow", but so far both colors we've tested, after sifting through tons of paint chips, have dried to a much sunnier yellow than I want.  I want the room to be bright and airy, but I don't want to feel as though we've been swallowed by Big Bird--I want "muted, bright, and airy", if that makes even a lick of sense.  Anyway, I predict another trip to Lowe's in my near future for some intimate time alone with the paint chip walls.  We've had some great times together in the past, I just know it won't fail me in the end.  Right, paint chip wall?

Thank God for Family and Wine

It seems such a short time ago that I was cavalierly mentioning how little stress I'd encountered during the wedding planning process.  I've had a nasty encounter with the shop that I bought my dress and bridesmaid dresses from and one mostly exhaustion-fueled "discussion" (some might say "meltdown") about tablecloths at the reception site, but all in all, everything has fallen into place remarkably well thus far.  And actually, everything is still going swimmingly as far as wedding plans go--it's the extra-curricular activities that are starting to give me a headache the size of Texas.  Or Alaska.  Whichever one is bigger.

(Oh, that reminds me of the time Colby and I were walking around campus a when we first started dating and I noticed his RA's car with an Alaska license plate on it.  I wondered aloud how she had gotten her car to Louisiana and mused that it must have been by ferry.  Colby looked at me in horrorified silence for a moment, I presume he was praying that I was joking, and then replied, "Or maybe she drove it here?!"  Because apparently Alaska is actually connected to North America and not, in fact, an island as many maps would lead one to believe.  Who knew?  I am so glad his attraction to me is not based on my geography prowess.  But I digress.)

So, back to the whining at hand.  I'm reaching the end of my rope about the supposedly fun-filled bachelorette party that my blessed sister is trying to plan and am completely ready to throw in the towel and just put the money toward our honeymoon fund.  Colby and I decided months ago that we would have our parties in Las Vegas this summer as our friends are spread across the country, and some even across the pond.  We agreed that we didn't want to have the parties the night before the wedding and the day before that will be Thanksgiving, so we figured we'd do it a little early and pick a fun place as our base of operations.  I talked to some of my friends about it at the time and they were all, "Yay, Vegas, here we come!"  That was then...

Let me insert here that I absolutely hate that I'm complaining about this, because the last thing that I want is to sound like the self-centered bride who thinks the whole world revolves around her and her stupid bachelorette party.  I don't think that, I know that my friends have their own lives, and I respect that completely.  It's just... it's hard to watch Colby talk to his friends about the bachelor party and hear them say, "Definitely, just tell me when and where and I'll be there!" and then of the 14 girls I invite, the only definite is my sister.  I love my friends to bits, I really, really do... it's just kind of disappointing, I guess.

Enough of that.

So, to wrap up my post from a couple of days ago--because Lord knows this blog has enough plot holes as it is--I decided to go with dress #1.  I bought it yesterday, so I'll post a review when I've had a chance to try it on.  The smallest they had was a 6 and according to the size charts I should have gotten a 4, but it looks like it will be able to be altered a bit and at least I know it won't be too small, because seriously, the last time I wore a size 4... well, let's not talk about that anymore.

My reasoning went like this, the turquoise dress was beautiful, and if I were a much richer girl I would have bought it in 10 different colors.  However, like a few of you so kindly pointed out, it will look dated by this time next year and if I'm going to drop some cash on a dress it needs to be something I can wear for more than a season.  The second red dress was so incredibly hot, I still kind of covet it, but I liked how one of you put it--it looked a little too "I'm gonna steal your husband while you're tossing the bouquet" for a wedding.  So, it came down to the LBD and red dress #1, which had been my secret front-runner all along.  But then my decision was made for me when the smallest size of the LBD was an 8 and the red dress was marked down 50% and less than half of the black Vera.  Thank you so much for all of your awesome input--I could see every single point each of you made and it really helped in the decision making process.

Now I'm off to eat some truly phenomenal Trader Joe's cookies and drink some wine... you know, just to make sure I can fill out that dress.

Fashion Dilemma

I've been searching high and low for a new dress that I can wear to weddings and semi-formal events.  I only have two right now that I would deem appropriate and they're both strapless A-lines--very demure.  So I'm looking for something a little different, something a little sexy, but still wedding appropriate.

These are my finalists, but I'm throwing them out there for some feedback.  I have a definite front runner right now, but I am curious about what my adoring public has to say!

We'll start with a couple of gorgeous red Nicole Miller pieces.

#1

#2

#3 A little turquoise Vera Wang number

#4 And another one from Vera... part of me wants to stay away from black, but I don't currently own a LBD and this one is the cutest one I've seen in a while, so I'm a bit torn.  You can't see the back, but it V's and the sash comes together in a sweet bow.

So, those are my choices.  Honestly, I would love to have them all hanging in my closet, but given that I'm not a completely talentless, insipid, blonde hotel heiress, that just isn't an option.  Any thoughts?

Fear not, I'll be back soon with some dishy gossip regarding the Stupid Jerk Boy from one of my ever so brief and ill-advised summer romances last year and his recent engagement.  Life is never boring around here!

So... It's Been A While, Yeah?

I don't get it.  A few months ago I had a full time job and then some, I had a fairly active social life, I was solely responsible for keeping my apartment clean and taking care of the dogs, I had to carve out a couple hours a day to talk to Colby--and still I blogged almost every day.  Now I'm completely unemployed, granted I still feel like the piles of dirty dishes and laundry never end, and my social life pretty much consists of trips to Lowe's and Wal-Mart with Colby, but I just can't seem to find the time to blog on a regular basis.  And I'm quite sad about this, because I love going back and reading old posts and looking back on where I was and how far I've come.  In a sense this website is my diary and I've been so proud of my ability to keep up with it and record my thoughts and feelings.

When I was younger, I was absolutely obsessed with Anne Frank.  I read her diary countless times as well as her collection of short stories.  I wanted to be remembered like her--of course at that age it didn't really occur to me that so much of what makes her fascinating is that her life was so tragic--I just saw that she was a young girl like me who enjoyed writing, had crushes on boys, and argued with her parents.  All she had to do was keep a daily diary and decades later people were reading what she had to say and loving her.  I tried so hard to keep a diary--I still have all of my sad attempts tucked away in a hope chest--but I could never stick with it.  Blogging has helped me leap that hurdle and I'm so glad that I've found this form of communication, both with the outside world and with myself.  I've learned so much about myself from being able to read the words I write when I'm sad an lonely in the middle of the night and from sharing my joys and adventures with all of you who have truly become great internet friends.  Blogging is a habit that I don't want to break and I will try to find a way to incorporate it back into my life on a more regular basis.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to have Colby back from his trip a few days early, so we were able to spend the week together before he left again, today, for a class in Kansas.  I had grand plans for all of the things I would get finished around the house during his last trip, but instead I spent most of my time buried in research for our Italy honeymoon or watching movies, but this time I really do want to get the upstairs taken care of once and for all.  I don't think I can stand another week of looking at partially unpacked boxes!  In exciting news, we finished putting down grass in the backyard.  It's been raining all day, so I haven't gotten any pictures that aren't primarily grey and splotchy, but it does look much better than the two sad little patches on either side of the patio!

This past week, Colby and I also made our first big "couple furniture purchase".  Well, okay, I guess actually the refrigerator was the first big couple purchase, but that's not actually very exciting.  (Although, I do love our refrigerator, for what that's worth.)  We spent a few days hunting online and in a few furniture stores looking for a dresser for the bedroom and two nightstands to replace the two rather worn down tables I'd inherited from my grandmother.  We checked out this great store based on a couple of recommendations, and 10% off coupon in hand headed to the store in Seattle to see what we could see.  We ended up with this dresser and two of these nightstands (nightstands assembled by moi, I'll have you know!):

And we fell in love with this table for the front entrance:  (Which, oh my God, Colby, are you reading this?  IT'S ON SALE!) 

I'm actually quite proud of our furniture shopping abilities, as we have very different decorating taste.  Colby is much more modern and extremely minimalist and I like a little extra flourish and swish here and there, so I was a little concerned.  But we both loved the pieces immediately, and I think with a little time Colby will come to appreciate my love for candles and vases of all shapes and sizes.  And even if he doesn't, I live here more than he does, so they're here to stay!

Just The Facts, Ma'am

Well, I'm back home and it seems that we've brought the sun back to Seattle with us.  No complaints here!  The days have been beautiful, I've been cleaning out my closet, trolling the sales racks for great deals on cute clothes, my nails are done and I booked an appointment for next week at a top rated salon in Seattle.  In short, I'm much happier with my situation now than I was about a week ago.  It helps that I'm over the PMS hump, but we won't linger on that now, will we?

So, you may have seen these little 5 question interviews that have been spreading through blogland like the plague.  I wanted to play along so I told Crazy Momcat that she could interview me, however, it seems that my blogger identity is still associated with my yahoo address, which is my junk mail account, so that's where her set of questions went.  Thinking that life had taken over and Steph just hadn't had a chance to send questions I saw that Wordnerd was looking for volunteers so I told her to bring it on, I weren't scared of no questions!  Sooooo, yesterday I was looking for an old email address in my yahoo account and lo!  I came upon a second set of questions from Steph.  And that was just a really long, unnecessarily detailed account of how I got double booked and will now be answering 10 questions.  With any luck my answers below will be a lot less boring than what you've seen here so far today.  And away we go!

From Wordnerd:

There's a small box on your doorstep, addressed to someone you don't know.  Do you open it?
Once upon a time, when I was just a young, impressionable little thing, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a woman who opened a box that was sitting on her doorstep and ended up with all of her fingers blown off.  Since reading that story I have been completely paranoid about opening any box that lands itself on my doorstep, regardless of the address on the label.  So, if I had a box that were addressed to someone else you can bet your butt that I wouldn't open that sucker.  And I'd probably try to contact Jack Bauer at CTU.

Are practical jokes funny?
When they happen to other people, they're hilarious!

Which three historical figures would you like to have cocktails with?
Okay, well, there are tons of historical figures I would like to meet, but since we're talking about cocktails that narrows the field a bit.  For starters, I think Marie Antoinette would be an absolute scream, and maybe she'd do my hair and let me try on her shoes.  The second invitee would be Oscar Wilde because he seems like a fun drunk and we could talk about all the cute boys together and then philosophize in the way you can only do when you're completely smashed.  And finally, I think Jesus would have to be in attendance so when we ran out of drinks he could just perform a couple of miracles and whip up some wine and sushi.

Which three historical figures would you NEVER have cocktails with?
Well, this is hard...  I think probably Hitler, for obvious reasons.  Why is this question so difficult?  There are all sorts of historical assholes that I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, never mind have cocktails with them.  Who the heck are they??  Oh, okay, Vlad the Impaler, definitely.  I think his idea of a cocktail is very different from mine anyway...  And oh my God, I just googled "evil people" to help me get some ideas and I came across this guy:  H. H. Holmes.  Check that out, y'all, that is seriously evil, I would NOT want to have cocktails with that guy!  How has that not been made into a horror movie yet?

It's a hot afternoon in August, and your chores  are all done.  What do you do?
I would head on down to Seattle and shop till I dropped.  Not terribly exciting, but hey, it's what I would do!

And now from Steph, a.k.a. Crazy Momcat:

List your 5 all-time-favorite CDs.
Hm, honestly this switches almost hourly, so I'll give you my five favorites right now
1. Rachael Yamagata, Happenstance
2. Katherine McPhee
3. Wicked (duh!)
4. No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom (it's almost a classic at this point!)
5. Britney Spears, Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (it hurts me to write that, but I love it)
I'm sorry I have such pedestrian taste in music, I swear I do listen to other things, but you just asked for my favorites!

What celebrity are you told you most resemble or do you most admire and why?
Most often I've heard I resemble Alyson Hannigan and Jennifer Aniston.  (And bizarrely enough, on the plane going to Arizona one of the flight attendants told me I looked like Monica from Friends--eh???)  I don't really see either one of those gals when I look in the mirror, but hey it's nice to hear, and whatever people want to tell themselves is fine by me.  As for the second half of the question, I don't really admire celebrities.  I enjoy their work, and quite a few of them are extremely attractive, but I don't think any of them are any more special than the person next door, just by virtue of their celebrity.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?
Honestly I can't pick one place--I want to live all over the place.  I want to live in another country at least once in my life and I certainly want to experience different regions of our own country.  Luckily, with Colby's job, I don't think those goals are extremely unreachable!

What is your biggest cause of stress in planning your wedding to Colby?
I'm really very rarely stressed.  I've had a couple of very stressful moments, and they're all related to the store where I bought my wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses.  The other sources of stress have mostly had to do with other people's "advice" and input.  But mostly I just try to breathe and remember that it's just a big party and what I need to focus on how excited I am to be marrying such an amazing man who I wake up every morning grateful and thrilled to have in my life.

List three of your favorite new blog finds.
I have been an absolutely TERRIBLE blog reader lately, but the most recent additions to my blog roll are Taster Spoon,  Princess in Galoshes, and Project: Gay.  And basically the only way to go on my blog roll is to be a favorite, so there you have it!

Those Damn Terrorists

Well, another week has come and gone and yet another house project has gone haywire.  It started with painting.  Painting looks easy enough, right?  I mean, they do it on those home makeover shows within one hour--with time leftover for commercials!  You put down the drop cloth, tape off all of your edges, slap a couple of coats of paint on the wall, pull off the tape, and voila--freshly painted beautiful room.  Except it doesn't really work like that, does it?  I mean, you stick to the drop cloth and it pulls away from the edge of the carpet right as paint drips off of your brush, you don't realize the span of the roller and end up painting the door frame, you pull up the tape that is supposed to protect the non-painted surface and find that the paint has seeped underneath the tape or that the tape wasn't applied perfectly evenly so you have a wavy border around the ceiling.  They don't show that part on tv, do they?  So then, we decided we're ready to put down grass.  We spend our weekends digging ditches in the backyard to bury the metal wire so the dogs can't dig out, we go buy the exact right 3-way mix, just the way they tell you to on those internet how-to sites.  Then we (read: Colby) spreads the soil and we (read: Angela) make sure it's spread evenly.  Then we do our research and order just the right amount of 5x5 patches of grass for our little patch of yard and wait for it to come in on Friday.  We pick up the grass and to our surprise find that it is not in fact 5x5 patches, but instead 1x5 patches.  Let me present to you, our yard:

That's it, that's our grass.  (And that's our sad, sweet little baby yard--we're thinking of installing a bowling alley instead of sod.)  Colby is leaving on Wednesday for another trip, so this is all the grass we get for now.  We're calling these our test patches.  If we kill these, we'll get another chance in a couple of weeks.

Tonight I have to pack for our trip to sunny, warm Arizona.  My cousin is getting married in Tucson and we are taking the opportunity to shirk our home ownership duties and run far, far away to a place with margaritas, free food, and someone else to drive us around for the weekend.  So, I was thinking about what I would pack, and how it would be so convenient being that it's a short trip I could just pack everything in my carry-on and not have to stress about checking baggage and whether or not my luggage would show up in the same place at the same time as me.  Until I remembered: The Hair Gel Terrorists.  I wish to God I were one of these totally with-it, hip traveler girls who could fit everything into little 3 oz containers and then fit it all into a properly sized baggie, but y'all, I've got hairspray, I've got special dispensers for my mouse and root spray.  These items cannot be transplanted into a smaller sized bottle and expected to survive.  It just would never work.  I curse you terrorists and what you've done to my ability to fake a low-maintenance lifestyle.  I may be an infidel, but at least I never screwed with your ability to pack efficiently.

Anyway, I think we (read: Colby) are going to plant some primroses and pansies in the front yard so that they can die while we're gone.  I think I'll go stand outside and offer words of encouragement and shiver a little in solidarity.  Have a great weekend!

A Little General Chit Chat

I have nothing to wear.  My closet is full but I hate all of my clothes.  My roots are taking over my life.  My nail polish is chipped and my feet are screaming out for a pedicure.  I desperately need a girly day.

See, here's the thing--I have so many clothes.  I have shirts, skirts, jeans, dresses, sweaters, jackets--you name it, I've got it.  The problem is that most of it stopped being even remotely in style about 3 years ago.  I had just enough cute clothes to keep me clothed and stylish if I were wearing a uniform 5 times a week, but the problem is that now I'm not wearing a uniform 5 times a week.  And the clothes that I do have and feel comfortable wearing in 2007 are either going out clothes or work clothes--not at all appropriate for a trip to Wal-Mart or a soccer game.  So, I've been wearing the same 5 shirts over and over again.  What I really need to do is just go through my closet and part with the clothes I haven't worn in the past 36 months.  But, I have this irrational fear that the second those clothes are out of my closet, I'll have a desperate urge to wear that lime green scoop neck baby tee or the navy blue American Eagle Summer Camp t-shirt that doesn't quite cover my stomach.  I just need Clinton and Stacy to break down my door and storm my closet with a trash can and witty, biting comments.

And then there's my hair, my poor, poor "blonde" hair.  My roots have reached ThreatCon: Brown, but I'm still in search of a great yet not mind blowingly expensive salon.  So, you know, if any of you locals out there have a recommendation, my follicles and I are all ears!  Well, my hair is not actually all ears, it is in fact hair, but I'm listening, and my little hairs have to follow me where ever I tell them we're going.

In happy news, I finally joined the 21st century and bought an Ipod.  I've had a SanDisk mp3 player for a while now, and it's the only thing that makes running bearable.  However, I recently discovered that all of the music I bought through iTunes won't transfer on to the player I had, and since I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade to something smaller and easier to use, I took the opportunity and found a refurbished Ipod Shuffle for about $40.  It arrived today and I'm absolutely in love with how tiny and insanely simple it is to use.  I'm a little sad that it's silver instead of hot pink, or even any other more interesting color, but I decided it wasn't worth $30 to buy the new Ipod just so it would be the right color.  Colby has inherited my old SanDisk, so now we can run together and completely ignore each other to our hearts content!  My shuffle is charging up right now, and hopefully some time this afternoon I'll try it out on a little dash around the block.

We've also finally been experiencing the beautiful Seattle weather that no one ever talks about.  See, everyone equates Seattle with rain, which, yes, okay, that's true.  But what they don't realize is that when it's not raining, the weather is absolutely perfect.  The sun shines, the temperature tends to stay between the upper 60s and 80s, all of the plants and trees are lush and gorgeous--it really is miraculous for this southern girl who's used to temperatures in the 90s and 100s and 100% humidity 8 months out of the year!  Of course, that fabulous weather only held out through yesterday evening, when Ellie and I went to watch Colby's squadron in a soccer game.  The minute we left the house for the game, the drizzle started and by the time the game had started it was full on raining.  Us girls were a little miserable, but our team won the game and remain undefeated for the season.  So, as proof of the gorgeous weather we've been having, here are a few pictures of our Saturday at the park.

Ellie is our cuddler--if there is a lap accessible, she'll be in it.


Jack likes to pretend he's independent.  Until we put him outside to play by himself and he spends the entire time crying with his face smashed against the window.



Running Time!


And then they pass out.  Unfortunately for you, I can't figure out how to upload video, because now you can't see Ellie and Colby rolling down a hill together or hear my horrific Britney Spears sounding voice.  What a shame!